Author: NY TIMES

As Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany broke ground for a new ammunition factory this week, he celebrated a move that should enable the country to restore its almost entirely depleted arsenal of artillery shells.But despite his portrayal of the groundbreaking as another German response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began two years ago this month, it was also a reminder of how slow the European reaction has been. It will be a year before the new factory is able to produce 50,000 rounds annually, with hopes of doubling that in 2026.That is too little and too late to help…

We’re kicking off our new season this Valentine’s Day with a story from a Modern Love veteran.David Finch has published three Modern Love essays about how hard he has worked to be a good husband to his beloved wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical woman, he found it especially challenging to navigate being a partner and father. To make things easier, Dave kept a running list of “best practices” to cover every situation that might come up in daily life. His method worked so well that he became a best-selling author and speaker on the…

Grover, the furry blue Muppet from “Sesame Street,” is known for working lots of jobs over the years, including astronaut and dentist. Now he is apparently a journalist.“As a news reporter, I always do my research before I break a story,” he wrote Monday on X. “I am confident to report that you are so special and amazing!”Some fellow journalists welcomed him into the profession, albeit with some ribbing about the reliability of his reporting and his professionalism. “Who are your sources,” wrote Danielle Kurtzleben, a reporter with National Public Radio, which published a separate news story about Grover’s foray…

The title of Netflix’s new documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which chronicles the recording of “We Are the World,” is a little mystifying. Pop music needs a big audience, but what happened inside A&M Studios in Los Angeles, in the vampire hours between 10 p.m. on Jan. 28, 1985, and 8 a.m. the next day, was seen by only 60 to 70 people in attendance, from Michael Jackson to a small film crew. The song that resulted in this frantic, logistically improbable session is stirring but callow, with a gospel-style chord progression that gives false weight to the platitudinous…

As far as the man in the food truck is concerned, the patch of land he occupies in Sheffield, England, is about as humdrum as they come. To him, the spot — in the drab parking lot of a sprawling home improvement superstore, its facade plastered in lurid orange — is not exactly a place where history comes alive.John Wilson, an academic at the University of Sheffield’s management school, looks at the same site and can barely contain his excitement. This, he said, is one of the places where the world’s most popular sport was born. He does not see…

On Monday evening along Madison Avenue in Manhattan, while fashionistas on the Upper East Side finished their shopping rounds at Dior and Chanel, a crowd headed to the French Institute Alliance Française to attend the premiere of an Apple+ series that recounts the origin story of those two fashion houses through the tale of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior’s lives in war-torn Paris during the 1940s.“The New Look,” which starts streaming today, is a period drama that portrays the rivalry between Chanel, who is played by Juliette Binoche, and Dior, who is played by Ben Mendelsohn. The show chronicles how…

Indonesia is heading to the polls The world’s third-largest democracy is today selecting not only a new president, but also members of Parliament and local representatives. The current president, Joko Widodo, appears to have made an alliance with Prabowo Subianto without explicitly endorsing him, and polls show Prabowo with a healthy lead. But for many, he is associated with Suharto, who ruled with an iron fist from the 1960s to the late 1990s. Prabowo was a general in Suharto’s army and was eventually discharged in 1998 for ordering the kidnappings of student activists. Also running for president are Anies Baswedan,…

WHAT HAVE WE HERE? Portraits of a Life, by Billy Dee WilliamsMy first awareness of Billy Dee Williams was the stuff of hushed beauty parlor conversation I was too young to appreciate. “After all these years he’s still fine,” elders whispered in my periphery as they flipped through an interview in an Ebony magazine that was treated as an heirloom. His piercing gaze leaped out across time. “That’s our Billy!” another giggled.As he tells it in “What Have We Here?,” his effortlessly charming new memoir, the actor’s only ambition was to be everyone’s Billy — a star to cross color…

Pakistan’s two main political dynasties reached an agreement late on Tuesday to form a coalition government, ensuring that candidates aligned with former Prime Minister Imran Khan will not take power despite having won the most seats in last week’s election.Leaders of the party favored by the country’s powerful military, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or P.M.L.N., announced that they had joined forces with another major party, the Pakistan People’s Party, and others to reach a two-thirds majority in the incoming Parliament.“This is not a time for disagreements, but to unite,” said Shehbaz Sharif, a former prime minister whom the coalition said…

On the day she was named the first Black and first openly gay White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre said she hoped her appointment might inspire other people who, like her, never imagined occupying the pre-eminent role in political communications.“I think this is important for them to see this,” she said in May 2022.Americans are seeing less of her lately.Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, Ms. Jean-Pierre has yielded the spotlight to a lower-ranking official, John F. Kirby. For months, Mr. Kirby has regularly co-hosted her daily briefings, often fielding more questions from journalists than she does, and…